Thursday, January 28, 2016

Another Side of Polarization – The Worldwide Web

We live in an information-driven world, from strategic decision-making, financial transactions, news, life-saving connectivity to down-and-dirty influence-peddling, manipulation and marketing. There was a time when third world folks would slip pen-tops into their pockets (minus the bottom part that actually does the writing) to suggest that they were literate. Today, it’s a smart phone… a real one. So much connectivity is through mobile vs. fixed platform tech. But without actual literacy, without the money to pay for the instrument to connect to the Web, the benefits that can be derived from connecting to the Worldwide Web simply don’t exist.

To the extent that others in your society have that literacy plus access to the Web, via computers, laptops or smart phones, those “without” are pushed further behind, have even lower economic potential and face increasing isolation from the rest of the world. They are the subsistence farmers, the uneducated poor crawling though desperation in urban ghettos and too many eking out a living in a marginal existence on the edge of everybody else.

On January 13th, the World Bank issued a report challenging the assumption that technology has created such a ubiquitous and open access to the massive stash of information and data such that the Web has become the great equalizer among people who literally never had so much unrestricted access to so very much. For those who cannot read, however, the World Bank report has stressed that the world has left them even further behind. There are significant communities on earth which are living pretty much the same way they lived 200 years ago, even half a millennium ago.

FastCompany.com (January 14th) summarizes: “The report's authors pointed out that those already well-off and well-educated have taken advantage of the Internet to achieve great success, however those on the lower end of the economic and education spectrums have seen fewer benefits, if any. The bank notes that 20% of the world’s population is still illiterate, making the Internet almost entirely useless to them. In other countries, women are discouraged from going online. In specific regions of the world, mobile phone ownership is disproportionately low, meaning that fewer citizens have access to the Internet. In total, 60% of the world’s population still remain offline.

“And even in places where populations do have easy access to the Internet and booming technology sectors, the economic benefits remain skewered mostly toward people who were already well-off. In developed countries, the technology sector still only employs 3% to 5% of the workforce. In developing countries, it’s less than 1%. In short, though the Internet and technology sectors have made some people very, very rich—virtually overnight—it’s not creating as many jobs as need be.

“The countries that are best able to take advantage of the economic benefits of the Internet are those with the largest number of users: China, the United States, and India, the report said.

“‘Countries that are investing in both digital technology and its analog complements will reap significant dividends, while others are likely to fall behind’ the bank said in the report. ‘Technology without a strong foundation risks creating divergent economic fortunes, higher inequality, and an intrusive state.’”

So what can a government do? Simply sending Web access to remote regions, expanding the reach into areas where technology would not normally reach, is not enough according to the World Bank. “[The report] says that governments must ensure competition between companies remains strong, programs are launched so workers can gain new skills needed by the tech sector, and that government institutions themselves remain accountable. These three things, the report said ‘are the foundation of economic development.’” FastCompany.com. Not to mention expanding fundamental literacy!

I’m Peter Dekom, and in a world where technology creates wealth, those who are denied the education and training to use it lose even more than they have ever lost before.

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Peter's Bio

Peter J. Dekom practices law in Los Angeles and was formerly "of counsel" with Weissmann Wolff Bergman Coleman Grodin & Evall and a partner in the firm of Bloom, Dekom, Hergott and Cook. Mr. Dekom's clients include or have included such Hollywood notables as George Lucas, Paul Haggis, Keenen Ivory Wayans, John Travolta, Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, Andy Davis, Robert Towne and Larry Gordon among many others, as well as corporate clients such as Sears, Roebuck and Co., Pacific Telesis and Japan Victor Corporation (JVC). He has been listed in Forbes among the top 100 lawyers in the United States and in Premiere Magazine as one of the 50 most powerful people in Hollywood .

Mr. Dekom has been a management/marketing consultant, and entrepreneur in the fields of entertainment, Internet, and telecommunications. As a consultant to the state of New Mexico for almost a decade, he was instrumental in creating, writing and implementing legislation to encourage film and television production in the state and supervised the film loan program portion of that incentive structure until the spring of 2011. Mr. Dekom has also provided off-balance sheet, insurance-backed financing for major motion picture studios.

Mr. Dekom served on the board of directors of Imagine Films Entertainment while the company remained publicly traded and was a board member of Will Vinton Studios and Cinebase Software, among others, leaving upon change of ownership. He has also served as a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and Academy Foundation, Board of Directors, Chairman (now Emeritus) of the American Cinematheque, and on the Advisory Board of the Shanghai International Film Festival. He recently served on the Board of Governors for the America Bar Assn.’s Sports and Entertainment Law Section, where he often authored articles, delivered lectures and continues to be an active participant.

The Beverly Hills Bar Association honored Mr. Dekom as Entertainment Lawyer of the Year in 1994, the Century City Bar Association accorded him the same honor in 2004, and the Family Assistance Program named him Man of the Year in 1992 for his work with the homeless. In 2012, the American Bar Association, through its Forum on Sports and Entertainment Law, honored Mr. Dekom with its highest recognition for entertainment lawyers, the Ed Rubin Service Award. Author of dozens of scholarly articles, Mr. Dekom also is the co-author of Not on My Watch; Hollywood vs. the Future (New Millennium Publishing, 2003) with Peter Sealey and author of Next: Reinventing Media, Marketing and Entertainment (HekaRose Publishing Group 2014). He has served as an adjunct professor in the UCLA Film School, a lecturer (entertainment marketing) at the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business as well as being a featured speaker at film festivals, corporations, universities and bar associations all over the world.

Mr. Dekom graduated from Yale in 1968 (BA), and graduated first in his class in 1973 from the UCLA School of Law (JD). He is married to Kelley Choate, an MBA and former art gallery-owner who evolved into a renowned micro-collage artist in her own right. He also has a son, Christopher (b. 1983), who is a Duke University graduate, a Chartered Financial Analyst, a 2013 Darden (UVa) MBA graduate, and is currently an executive with a Los Angeles-based media and entertainment company. Chris' wife, Stephanie (a 2013 George Washington University MD grad), is a neonatal pediatrics 'fellow' at a major Los Angeles hospital